Outlook and Support of Early Career Physician-Scientists

* 1. Physician-scientists represent only 1.5% of the biomedical workforce (Jain et al 2019) and face unique challenges. Transitioning from the resident and fellow to junior faculty career stages are the leakiest parts of the physician-scientist pipeline.

This is a survey on behalf of the American Junior Investigators Association (AJIA), a nonprofit dedicated to the success of early career physician-scientists across the full spectrum of specialties. This survey is intended to be distributed to late stage PSTP/research track residency/fellowship trainees/graduates of MD PhD and DO PhD programs and those who have graduated from PSTPs/research track residencies/fellowships within the past 10 years in the United States.

The goal of the survey is to assess how our recent research track trainees are faring and what drives their decisions in choosing faculty positions. The COVID-19 pandemic has further compounded the above issues, and we want to prepare for and mitigate potential problems that may require advocacy/education/outreach for clinical and research directions to avoid losing a generation of physician-scientists.


Through the survey, we seek to characterize how early-career physician scientists have fared, important factors in choosing a career and any challenges/problems they are facing in their transition to a full time position post training. The results of the survey will be used to advocate for changes to policies/institutional structures that will help retain and advance a diverse academic medical faculty. Any significant results will potentially be published in a peer-reviewed journal.


This survey is completely anonymous and voluntary. No personally identifying information will be linked to your survey responses. There is no harm or risk associated with taking the survey.


To protect the survey taker, the account in which responses are stored is password-protected and can only be accessed by the researchers.

The survey will take approximately 5-7 minutes to complete.


If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the following research coordinators of this study: Yale School of Medicine research coordinator of this study: Jennifer M Kwan, MD PhD jennifer.kwan@yale.edu, the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center research coordinator, Evan Noch MD PhD, evan.noch@utsouthwestern.edu or the Massachusetts General Hospital research coordinator, Dania Daye MD PhD. The Survey has been IRB approved at Massachusetts General Hospital.


*Agreement of Subject I have read the above information and understand the terms of my participation. I agree to participate in this study.